Michael David Lukas, trying to come to grips with thissame tendency, has noted theemergence of a new typeof fiction distinguished byits "multiplicity of voices.""A strange literary beast hasreemerged," he writes, " ahybrid of the short story andtraditional novel. This newlyreinvigorated genre — let’scall it the polyphonic novel."

The comparison with musical polyphony is fitting because,as with the counterpoint, the voices in these recent novelsare made to fit together with a virtuosity akin to thatdemonstrated by the great contrapuntal composers.Instead of "messy cacophony" these novels delight withtheir complicated coherence.

5

Yet Lukas focuses on only one aspect of this new literarytrend. These novels do not simply delight us with theircontrasting voices. They also send us through an enjoyablelabyrinth. The books he describes are filled with sharpturns and apparent dead ends, yet we always reach ourfinal destination. Their authors are not just displayingvirtuosity in creating a range of voices, but also showingoff their ingenuity in building coherent narratives out ofstarkly juxtaposed bits and pieces.

Or, put differently, previous attempts to create fragmentednovels tended to emphasize content over form. The current tendency in the fragmented novel is to exhibit a relentless formalism even while, at a superficial level, the books seemto reject it.

6

Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad providesan illuminating example of this. Every chapter presents aradical disjunction. The main character changes, the plotchanges, the prose style changes. But only after we completethe book do we realize that Egan has actually continued and completed every one of these abandoned plots. Each storyis given closure in the background of the succeeding chapters. The abandonment of form has been an illusion. Egan hasbeen in control all the time.

A similar hidden coherence emerges again and again inmany of the most influential 21st century novels, such asCloud Atlas or Atonement. The books appear loose, butare actually tight. They come to our hands masqueradingas postmodern pastiches, even as they reject most of thetenets of postmodernism.

7

This is a remarkable turn of events. And it is clearly relatedto the shift in how authors’ reputations are made nowadays. A generation ago, academic critics decided who the 'mostimportant novelists' were. Nowadays, literary stars are madeby the teachers and students at MFA writing programs.

When academic literary critics ruled the roost, they prizedtexts that were recondite and suitable vehicles for interpretationby (yes, you guessed it) academic literary critics.The writersin the MFA programs appreciate these works too, but givemore attention to elements of craftsmanship—plotting,dialogue, pacing and other nuts-and-bolts matters thatacademic critics have downplayed in recent decades.

When I was a student of literature, my professors—whowere academic literary critics, not fiction writers—almostnever mentioned these elements of craft. I remember oneprofessor even going on a rant in class about students whopaid too much attention to the plot of the novel. He had moreimportant matters in mind when he read a book than theactual story. Meanwhile, a completely different set ofconcerns were on the minds of those involved in theuniversity's 'creative writing' program. I was told that oneteacher in this program even required students to write a"supermarket novel," thus forcing them to pay attention toall the ingredients necessary to get a book placed prominentlyin the rack in front of the checkout aisle at Safeway.

It was hard to believe that two such different approaches tofiction could be championed at the same time at the sameuniversity. Something would have to give.

8

But, strange to say, nothing had to give.

The beauty of the new fragmented novel is that writers canhave it both ways. These books pay deference to complexity,that deity of the lit critic, but they are also marked by anintense devotion to plot, pacing and other elements oftraditional craft. Highbrow and lowbrow elements arepleasingly blurred. Experimentation proves that it iscompatible with accessibility.

I am attracted to these books—and I suspect others areas well—because of their skill in serving such conflictingmasters, and without obvious compromises.

9

A passing note: The fragmented narrative is not just atrend in literary fiction. In 1978, a typical 30-second TVcommercial had a camera cut every 3.8 seconds. By1991, these same commercials inserted a camera cutevery 2.3 seconds. Yet music videos were adopting anever more rapid pace, featuring a cut every 1.6 seconds. Fiction is responding to these changes, rather thaninitiating them. Almost all of the arts now aspire to apleasing sense of dislocation.

10

The fragmented novel has gone through three phases inmodern times. Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio(1919) exemplifies the early attempts to take a series ofshort stories and turn them into a novel. A. E. van Vogtgave this approach a name—he called it the "fix-up" andhe built his own reputation on repackaging his pulp fictionshort stories into books that resembled, more or less, science fiction novels.

Van Vogt’s motivation was primarily financial. "A novel wouldsell whereas the individual stories seldom did," he explainedto an interviewer. "Hence, the great thought came; and thefix-up novels began." The obvious advantage was thatvan Vogt could sell the same piece of writing twice. As forthose who attacked him for peddling secondhand goods inhis novels, the author countered: “I could only shake my headover these people; to me, they were obviously dilettanteswho didn't understand the economics of writing science fiction."

11

Yet the "fix-up" approach is capable of producing literaryworks of the highest merit. Some of the greatest 'novels'of the 20th century could be classified as 'fix-ups'—master-pieces such as Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses or Tim O'Brien'sThe Things They Carried. The 'Winesburg strategy'continues to find advocates in the current day. ElizabethStrout's Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2009and Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists (2010) have morein common with the old Sherwood Anderson type offragmented novel than with the works by Egan, Mitchell andothers discussed above. But these turbocharged fix-upsalso contribute to the ascendancy of this new aesthetic ofcollage and juxtaposition.

12

Jay McInerney recently remarked: "I suspect that if Dublinershad been published in recent years it would have beenmarketed as a novel."

13

Experimental novelists rediscovered the fragmented novelin the late 1950s. But their conception was diametricallyopposed to that of Sherwood Anderson and other practitionersof the 'fix-up' and bears only a superficial connection to thenew style of fragmented novel exemplified by Egan, Mitchelland others. The avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s did notwant their textual fragments fit together, and devised a hostof new methods to create a sense of dislocation anddiscontinuity among readers.

At an extreme, William Burroughs employed his "cut-up"method that brought a degree of deliberate randomnessinto his prose. Burroughs didn't invent the technique—backin the 1920s, Dadaist Tristan Tzara announced that poetrycould be created by pulling words out of a hat. Literally out ofa hat, a black magician's hat in Tzara's case. John DosPassos dispensed with the hat, but experimented in the1930s with comparable techniques, inserting newspaper head-lines and bits of articles or songs into his U.S.A. Trilogy. Doris Lessing would later do something similar in The Golden Notebook (1962) and, in my opinion, achieved better resultsthan Dos Passos. J.G. Ballard took the same approach inThe Atrocity Exhibition—and it was revealing that he askedBurroughs, the most extreme exponent of the cut-up (asopposed to the fix-up) to write an introduction to a lateredition of this novel.

14

The postmodern turn in literature left us with a host oftechniques for turning a novel into bits of semantic shrapnel. These books made strange, unprecedented demands on their readers. At the beginning of Hopscotch, Julio Cortázarsuggests a non-sequential way of proceeding through hisnovel, starting with chapter 73 and ending with chapter 131. J.G. Ballard takes an even stranger approach in The Atrocity Exhibition. "Rather than start at the beginning of each chapter,"he writes in his introduction, “simply turn the pages until aparagraph catches your eye." Italo Calvino continually enticeshis reader into expecting some degree of narrative continuityin If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, only to disrupt the processwith constant obstacles and interruptions. At the other extreme,Raymond Queneau tells the same tedious story over and over again 99 times in his Exercises in Style. In Pale Fire,Vladimir Nabokov hid his novel in a text that masqueraded asan academic’s annotation of a work of modern poetry.

15

Non-fiction also contributed new techniques. RolandBarthes published his autobiography in 1975, and brokeit up into fragments that were organized in alphabetical order. Not long after this work was translated into English, afriend told me that he wanted to try the same approach in anovel. He would write chapters that would have simple,descriptive titles, and then these chapters would be arrangedin order from A to Z.

"The key," he admitted, "is for the climactic scene to takeplace at a zoo."

But what my friend suggested in humor soon became reality.Milorad Pavić, published his Dictionary of the Khazars in1984—and here the novelist surpasses Barthes by includingthree separate and contradictory narratives in his book,each disguised as a lexicon in alphabetical order.

The only thing Pavić missed was the zoo.

16

"I wanted very much to accept his offer of the American rightsbut as my capacity is limited, and short stories in book formdo not sell well in America I reluctantly abandoned the idea."From Bernard Huebsch’s rejection letter for James Joyce’s Dubliners

17

But the most prominent non-fiction role model for thefragmented novel came from Ludwig Wittgenstein, whoseTractatus Logico-Philosophicus had long bewitched,bothered and bewildered readers with its numberedstatements that ostensibly presented a coherent philosophy,but could also be read as an extravagant type of poetry.

Wittgenstein offered sublime pronouncements, such as:

1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case whileeverything else remains the same.

or

2.027 Objects, the unalterable, and the substantial are oneand the same.

These kind of statements, as far as I can see, really aren'tmuch different from:

A man and a womanAre one.

A man and a woman and a blackbirdAre one.

So who can be surprised when experimental authors drewexplicit comparison between their works and the Tractatus? If fragmentation were more than just a game storytellersplayed and could actually stake a claim for its superior graspof reality, then Wittgenstein was the prophet and systematizerwho provided a philosophy to complement the fracturednarratives of the postmodern novelists.

18

But the two most prominent postmodern novels with explicit reference to Wittgenstein's Tractatus—Philip K. Dick'sVALIS and David Markson's Wittgenstein’s Mistress—both featured narrators who are mentally disturbed.

So does the Tractatus-as-role-model take us closer torealism or further away?

19

The fractured works of the current day represent the thirdstage in the evolution of the fragmented novel. The first stage focused on the fix-up. The second stage introduced thecut-up. The third and perhaps final stage seeks an exemplary wholeness, a fitting together of the fragments into brilliantpatterns. It does not court randomness or glorify schizophrenia. The fragments here are not shrapnel. More like pieces of a glorious jigsaw puzzle.

20

Indeed, the first work of fiction to explore this technique,predating the rise of the new fragmented novel, is actuallyabout jigsaw puzzles. Georges Perec's Life A User’' Manual(1978) tells the story of a wealthy eccentric who is obsessedwith these puzzles, and they serve as a ruling metaphor forthe book, both a unifying element of plot, and a structuralblueprint for Perec’s fictional account of the activities insidea Parisian apartment block on June 23, 1975.

When it was published, Perec's work was hardly seen as aharbinger of the future of mainstream literary fiction. More the quirky effort of a writer every bit as eccentric as the peoplehe describes in his novels. Yet fast-forward a generation, andLife A User's Manual would be very much at home in aliterary culture that turns Cloud Atlas into a Tom Hanks movieand awards a Pulitzer Prize to A Visit from the Goon Squad.

21

But if I had to pick a milestone moment when the new styleof fragmentation emerged, I would pinpoint the release ofDon DeLillo's Underworld in 1997. In 2006, when the NewYork Times asked authors and critics to vote for the bestwork of American fiction of the last 25 years, DeLillo's800-page behemoth finished second, trailing only ToniMorrison's Beloved. I suspect that these voters responded,as did I, to DeLillo’s extraordinary skill in presenting a storythat was sprawling and multivalent, yet also meticulouslycontrolled and orchestrated.

At the time of its publication, Underworld must have seemeda one-of-a-kind book, but with the passing years we can seehow this novel anticipated many later developments. Andnot just in terms of how to impart structure and solidity to afragmented novel. The cover of DeLillo's novel featuredan ominous photograph of the Twin Towers, all this beforetheir own horrifying fragmentation just four years later.Somehow this book managed to be a 9/11 novel avant lalettre. Michiko Kakutani was hardly exaggerating whenshe announced in 2011 that Underworld "not only capturedthe surreal weirdness of life in the second half of the 20thcentury but also anticipated America’s lurch into the terrorand exigencies of the new millennium."

22

"More and more, I read in pieces. So do you. Digital media,in all its forms, is fragmentary. Even the longest stretches oftext online are broken up with hyperlinks or other interactiveelements (or even ads). This is neither a good nor bad thing,necessarily — it is simply a part of modern reading."Guy Patrick Cunningham, "Fragmentary: Writing in a Digital Age"

23

It’s no coincidence that the legitimization of comic books—now referred to as graphic novels—has taken placeduring the same period that mainstream literary fiction hasgrown increasingly fragmented. The white panels (or'gutters') that separate the frames of the graphic novelare much like the gaps that now break up prose narratives.

"The use of gutters," writes Naomi Pallas, "draws attentionto the fragmentary nature of [comic book] narratives, andallows the authors to explore dynamic elements such ascrumbling memories onto the page."

The graphic novel, like the current incarnation of thefragmented novel, seeks to create an impression ofcontinuity and flow even while its basic structural deviceis one of separation and discontinuity. So the legitimizationof these once despised 'comic books' is not just anotherelevation of pop culture into the realm of the mid-brow andhigh-brow. It also signals a convergence between literaryfiction and graphic narratives. A similar type of formalismprevails in both idioms.

24

In 2009, Matt Stewart announced his plan to tweet his entiredebut novel The French Revolution in bite-sized 140-charactertidbits. He started on Bastille Day and finished four monthslater on October 21, 2009. His book, originally consisting ofapproximately 3,700 tweets, was later published inconventional print format by Soft Skull Press.

Many other authors have followed up on the promise of thetweet novel. Meanwhile in Japan, mobile phone novels,known as keitai shousetsu, have become bestsellers. These downsized 'books', with chapters of around 70-100words, have spawned a new business model for publishingand distributing fiction.

25

All experimental approaches in the arts can perhaps bedivided into two categories—experiments of disjunctionor experiments of compression. Either things get pushedapart, or get squeezed together. Either an aesthetic ofdisintegration, or an aesthetic of wave-like flow.

This dichotomy exists outside progressive fiction, perhapsfinding a place in every art form. Think of Thelonious Monkas the jazzman of fragmentation, and Bill Evans as hisopposite, the exponent of immersive flow. Or compare thebrusque confronting shapes of cubism versus the gradientpalette of impressionism. Or contrast the visual flow ofStanley Kubrick (every film has at least one long unsplicedtracking shot) and Terrence Malick with the choppy, in-your-face approach of Quentin Tarantino and the French NewWave directors.

It was the destiny of avant-garde fiction during most of the20th century to favor the flow style, instead of the disjunctiveapproach. James Joyce played the decisive role in thishistory. His advocacy of stream-of-consciousness changedthe course of fiction for almost a half-century. Joyce madeclear the exciting potential for a new kind of novel, in whichall dividing lines—whether of punctuation or psychology, plotor theme—could be torn asunder. This interpretation of20th century literature may not be entirely fair to Joyce (who claimed that Ulysses represented more than a stream-of consciousness novel, and offered "eighteen different pointsof view and in as many styles, all apparently unknown or undiscovered by my fellow tradesmen") but, for better orworse, this was how he was perceived by the nextgeneration. Along with other masters of a flow approach(Faulkner, Woolf, Proust), Joyce set the tone for avant-garde writers of the next two generations.

The postmodern boom of the 1970s and 1980s made thefirst dent in this aesthetic. None of these authors had thesame cachet as their illustrious predecessors. Italo Calivnois not Joyce; Paul Auster is not Faulkner. But they planted aseed, and set an example that is now influencing the currentexponents of literary fiction. Yet here's the unexpected twist:the techniques of disjunction and fragmentation, once pursuedas part of an avant-garde movement, have been tamed andsubdued. In short, they have gone mainstream.

26

Yes, the literary novel is falling to pieces. And I'll predictthat this process still has a long way to go. The fact thatthe publishing business is also falling to pieces—albeit ina different way—may only accentuate the trend, as writersembrace pointillistic do-it-yourself media to present theirdeliberately broken wares to an audience that has grownup on bite-sized fare.

Yes, at some point all trends reverse, and today's questfor a pleasing disjunction may well be replaced by asubsequent taste for smoother narratives. But that's probablystill years off in the future. In the current moment, nothingseems less likely than the rise of a literary community thatembraces homogenized forms of fiction. Most of usare deeply suspicious of proffered unities nowadays—andfor a good reason, no? Been there, done that. Tidynarratives have become the domain of politicians andideologues. As for the rest of us...well, we've all gottenon our knees and prayed we won't get fooled again. Solet's grab on to the next best alternative. Let’s try to stackour bits and pieces into pleasing wholes that approximatea unity. This just might be good enough until somethingbetter comes along.

Ted Gioia writes on music, books and popular culture. He is currentlywriting his ninth book, Love Songs: A Secret History, forthcoming fromOxford University Press.

Publication date of this essay: July 17, 2013

Fiction is responding to these changes, rather thaninitiating them. Almost all of the arts now aspire to apleasing sense of dislocation.